The Last Route
by garamonder
Summary: It was bad enough that Edward had to put his research on hold to go handle an assignment in the southeast. It got worse when he discovered his destination was only accessible by a rambling coach ride, and worse still when someone sabotaged the coach. Now he's stuck with strangers in the middle of nowhere, and one - or more - of them is hiding something.
1. Chapter 1

Boyd Hatfield folded his hands placidly and repeated himself. "You're gonna have to take the coach."

The boy standing before him wore a red coat and an umbraged expression. "I _know_ there's a train stop at Falstadt," he insisted.

Hatfield shrugged, making no argument. "Sure, but it's not accessible. Track maintenance."

"Right," said the boy furiously, "must have gone the way of their phone line too. Tracks don't take that long to repair. You're telling me there really isn't any chance of the train?"

"Not as far as I know," said Hatfield, squinting as a sun glare reflected off the glass of his booth. "And _I'd_ know."

A few customers had begun to line up behind the irate boy, tapping out their impatience with booted toes.

The lad huffed for a moment before accepting defeat. "When's this coach for Falstadt leave, then?"

"It doesn't. It leaves for Duros. It's the next town over, though; I'm sure you can hitch a ride from there."

He could have sworn a vein throbbed in the kid's forehead.

"Seriously?" the boy exploded. "We're not that far into the sticks! What kind of backwater outfit is this?"

Hatfield frowned. "Hey now, son," he admonished, knitting his old knuckles together. "Sometimes a wrench gets thrown in the works. It happens." The kid scowled, but launched no further invectives. "This coach is what's available. Do you want a seat or not? There's only one left on the next one out. After that you'll have to wait 'til tomorrow."

The kid frowned, considering. He was young, but he wore none of the self-consciousness Hatfield was used to seeing in teenagers navigating long and sometimes confusing transit on their own. The kid looked sweaty and annoyed, but not nervous. Perhaps he was a student trying to get home during a school holiday. Hatfield thought of his own granddaughter, home from school in the south and so desperately glad to see family over the break. The first thing Hatfield had done was make her pancakes.

More gently, the station ticketer prodded, "I'm certain there's a shuttle that goes from Duros. Once you get there it won't be such a hard hop, you'll see."

Possibly the lad sensed Hatfield was trying to reassure him, because he raised an eyebrow. "That's a relief," he drawled. Then he sighed. "How much is the coach?"

Hatfield told him. The lad yelped a protest at the price, and venomously insinuated the train line was trying to fleece customers out of extra cenz. "I'm not in charge of that, sonny," Hatfield said, shading his eyes from more of the glare. "I just take tickets."

The boy slammed down his fee with a white-gloved hand. _How dainty_ , thought Hatfield, amused. Because of his wife and sisters, he had always associated white gloves with delicate dispositions. Only society ladies bothered with them around here; it was too much trouble to keep them spotless during the dusty summers. Maybe it was a city affectation. The boy had come in on the train from East City, where evidently braids were also in fashion. Trendy kids.

Hatfield collected the money and filled out a ticket for the coach. He asked the young man's name and then wrote down Edward Elric in neat print. The traveler drummed his gloved fingers on the booth counter, worn smooth over the years.

"You familiar with Falstadt?" he asked.

Hatfield didn't look up as he wrote. "Been a while," he said conversationally, "but it's a nice area. Me and the wife have vacationed there a few times. Wrought iron and weeping willows." Then, curiously, he looked up. "Ah, I suppose you're not from there, then."

"Nah, just visiting."

Hatfield smiled and said wryly while he finished the ticket, "Perhaps whoever you're visiting will be grateful enough to reimburse the ticket." He slid the paper across the counter.

"I don't know about gratitude," said Elric, equally dry, "but it will definitely be reimbursed."

"Sadie likes The Green Goose Inn. If you need a room, I'd go there," Hatfield advised. "Good stew."

Elric nodded, hefting his suitcase. "You know, every inn I stay at seems to have the name of a color and a noun. One more for the list." He took the slip and the next customer rushed to fill in the wake before Hatfield could fully ponder why the lad had to stay in inns so often.

Marsia adjusted her parasol against the sun. It was an especially dusty day. As ever in summer, the trains kicked up an awful mess around the station. Before leaving her sister that morning, whom she'd been visiting, she'd sighed to Ami's sympathetic ear that she would have to clean her skirts first thing after arriving home. Ami, dear girl, had offered her own traveling skirt but Marsia had kissed her cheek and bade her keep it.

This coach was better appointed, she was told, than the last. It was supposedly quite modern. Plenty of horsepower under the hood, the station master had promised, and more room than a shuttle bus.

Marsia quickly found the departure stand. The coach itself was a large vehicle about the breadth and length of a train car. Sitting above the engine, the driver's cab was slightly elevated from the coach's body and accessible by a couple of small stairs.

She arrived to find the harried-looking coach driver being entreated by a young man in a red coat to modify the route.

"I'll give you another ten thousand cenz," he pressed. "Come on, it's not that far from Duros."

The coachman shrugged irritably and said, for what seemed to be the umpteenth time, that it went against transit authority regulations to adjust the route or add a new one, outside of emergency.

The boy was still arguing when the coachman spotted Marsia and came over to take her luggage, leaving the lad to stew beside one of the passenger doors with his own suitcase in hand.

She passed another Monarch Lines employee loading packages and letters into a separate compartment from the luggage. The coach doubled as the primary mail carrier for Duros. Surely this shipment contained the hat she had ordered from Pell's Haberdashery in Central; she could scarcely wait to see it and lingered to scrutinize the packages for anything resembling a hatbox.

Resigned to waiting for the post, Marsia entered the coach and was pleased to see it was well furnished as the station master said. She had taken some ghastly coach rides before Monarch Lines had endeavored to improve on the old shuttles. The floor was prettily carpeted and the sides were upholstered in a flowery suede. Truth be told, it resembled a comfortable train car more than it did the interior of an automobile. It was tall enough to stand in, and Marsia selected an plush armchair by a window.

A minute later the boy who had argued with the coachman climbed in as well, gazing around in interest, apparently impressed. "Well," he said to himself, "it beats the bus." He fell gracelessly into a chair across the breadth of the coach, picking idly at his gloves as he looked around.

There was something insolent in his manner and Marsia resolved to ignore him for the duration of the trip.

Other passengers filed in, ducking through the coach door and scanning the available seats. Most of them were dressed after the genteel style of Duros and the southeast. Only the strange young man's garish red coat stood out against the earthy corduroys. It was rather hot for such a heavy-looking coat and leather gloves, but the dust did force one to consider exposure.

After sitting, most pulled out newspapers. A distinguished-looking gentleman took the seat nearest Marsia, giving her a pleasant nod she returned in the gracious fashion she'd been taught since girlhood.

Forgetting her resolution, she spied the blonde boy assessing the company from the corner of his startlingly yellow eye. For some reason the color suddenly reminded her of a mangy, lean coyote she'd once seen, midway through shedding its coat and prowling her garden for rabbits that weren't there. Briefly that eye fixed on her and she turned away.

A young lady entered, bringing some welcome female company. She and Marsia exchanged pleasantries with each other, Marsia surreptitiously assessing the woman's lace gloves even as the other woman's eyes went to her new heeled boots. It was like that in the southeast. The gentleman sitting next to Marsia charitably offered his seat to the young lady—who introduced herself as Ms Kady Somers—so the womenfolk might sit together.

The coach driver popped his head in the door. "Be off in a few," he said cheerfully. Everyone smiled save for the blonde lad, whose scowl reasserted itself. Marsia could only imagine he'd continue to harangue the man for a course adjustment.

She and Kady fell into conversation, finding they had common acquaintances in Duros. Marsia found her to be a nice girl and thought of her own brother, recently disengaged from his temperamental fiance. Perhaps she'd introduce them.

At last the coachman reappeared. "Tea time's at two," he announced, "and we'll stop to serve dinner at four. Our estimated arrival in Duros will be seven o'clock."

He turned to step into the cab when the teenager spoke to him in a lower tone. "I've got a question," she heard him say. "If the train doesn't go to Falstadt anymore, why isn't a coach taking its place?"

"This shuttle's been going to Duros for years," said the driver placidly.

"Sure, but you'd think the line would adjust the route since the Falstadt track went out. Isn't that their job?"

His question sounded more curious than sour, which was perhaps why the coachman was willing to answer. He dropped his voice a little and the teenager leaned forward slightly to listen. So did Marsia, only a bit. "Falstadt hasn't renewed its contract with Monarch Lines," she heard the coachman tell him. "The last one ended this past month."

The boy's eyebrows climbed his forehead. "Is that so." He sounded thoughtful. "Does the track actually need repair? Or is that Monarch's stopgap while they haggle it out?"

Shrugging, the driver snapped on a pair of handsome driving gloves. "It probably does need routine maintenance, but it won't be done until the city signs."

He stepped up into the cab and started the engine. The boy sat back in his chair, eyes on the driver's back but not really looking at him.

Marsia had recently spoken with Ami about a lakeside retreat in Falstadt, which was sounding more and more like it might have to wait. The loss of a track, which acted as a lifeline for even the most successful of these outlying cities, was a death knell. Everyone whispered the town mayor was a drunkard now. Falstadt had been so _nice_ once; it was a shame to see it falling slowly into disrepair.

She told all of this to her sympathetic companion, who was similarly aware of the town's troubles.

"Starting off," called the driver, and the coach lurched into gear.

Duros was a booming town, though still smaller than its nearest neighbor, Falstadt, and the road there was not fully paved. Still, it was quite flat and so long as you didn't open the window to let the dust invade it wouldn't be too bad a ride.

"This one's smoother than the last, at least," said Marsia to her companion.

"Oh?" said Kady distractedly and Marsia followed the young woman's gaze to the teenage boy, who had discarded the red coat to reveal a severe black ensemble. Marsia fought back a roll of her eyes. Well, Kady was young. At that age there was less accounting for taste.

The boy pulled out a book from his suitcase and slumped in his chair. The gentlemen in the carriage struck up amiable chat. Mr. Laramie was a pleasant, if somewhat nervous man, and Mr. Hodge was a constable in Duros of whom Marsia was aware, but had never been formally introduced. A few others, businessmen by the sound of their look and conversation, made up most of the remainder.

Two hours passed in peace and a lull settled over the company. Conversation fell off as a few people yawned over their newspapers and coffee. This was always the most boring part of the ride, when the novelty of riding with strangers had worn out.

Marsia pulled out her embroidery. She was stitching a little garden into a blanket for Ami's dear new baby girl, possibly the sweetest little thing there was. Kady complimented her on the embroidering and Marsia blushed in genuine delight.

 **BANG!**

Something like a shot cracked the air. The coach jumped and shuddered massively, and Marsia's fingers slipped. "Ow!" she cried, whipping a glove off the hand and sucking the finger she'd just pricked with her needle.

"What the—" began another passenger as the coach lurched abruptly to a halt. Everything in the coach shook and and flew forward, throwing everyone out of their seats and shattering pieces of china so that Kady had to spring hurriedly off the floor.

There was an awful groan and then a hiss. For a moment no one spoke, only stared around with wide eyes to assess the damage to everyone else. The teenager sprang up first and darted to a window, glancing around before throwing it open and sticking his head out. Smoke began wafting past Marsia's window from the direction of the engine.

"Is everyone okay?" shouted the coachman, taking the steps in a single leap and dashing forward to help up the women. Kady murmured a shaky assent, and Marsia took a hand to assist her.

"What on earth happened?" she asked breathlessly. "Why did we stop like that?"

"The engine fair lost its mind," said the driver. "I'll go see to it." Marsia detected a note of bravado; the poor man had no idea what had happened.

As he jumped out the coach door, Marsia and Kady looked at each other before staring around at the expanse outside.

They were hours from anywhere, and they were stopped.

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I enjoy when my favorite characters are viewed from the perspectives of others, so I decided to give this a shot. Hopefully the original characters aren't annoying. Funnily enough, this idea came as a prequel to something else I was planning to write. This is my first time writing FMA; I'm new to it so please excuse any errors. If you have any thoughts I'd like to hear them!


	2. Chapter 2

Hodge kicked at some gravel as the coachman bent over the engine, fanning away some residual smoke. This sort of thing was supposed to be men's work but the fellows standing around with him clearly felt pretty useless. They'd all piled out to see to the engine, which sure enough was belching smoke.

The blond teenager who'd been riding up front leaned out of a window and looked from the coach driver to the gentlemen.

"Would it help," he said acidly, "If I got out and pushed?"

One of the men who'd gathered around the front of the coach spat into the dust. "It might, sonny."

Hodge ignored them. "Well?" he asked the driver, who shrugged helplessly.

"This motor is brand friggin' new!" he exclaimed, briefly dropping the diplomatic manner. "I oversaw her installation last week! You wouldn't know it from looking at her; she looks like she's been rattling around in there a century."

"Was it switched for an older model?"

"No! This design is cutting edge. It's the same girl but it's like she's four miles old goin' on three hundred thousand."

He spoke with familial indignation and Hodge felt sorry for the driver, who clearly cherished his machine.

None of them really seemed in any place to contradict his assessment. Hodge barely knew the back end of a car from his own ass. The coach door swung open and the blond boy stumped out, shielding his eyes from the glare and scowling at the lot of them as though each and every man were responsible for the delay.

"How far are we from the nearest…anything?" another passenger asked.

The driver sighed. "Maybe…a four hour walk to the nearest phone or telegraph line."

Four hours wasn't so bad, thought Hodge, reckoning back to his army experience. They'd marched for longer a day than that, when tracks and trucks couldn't conquer the terrain.

The teenager brushed past him to get closer to the engine. His frown thinned at the sight of the motor and he pitched forward, frowning and prodding at the metal with a white-gloved finger.

"Careful, it's still hot," warned the driver but the boy ignored him, tapping a spot with the index finger of his right hand.

"This is a transmutation mark," he said, pointing it out to the startled driver. Then he peered over the rest of the hissing metal, harrumphing in some kind of professional enlightenment. "Yeah, they're all over. It wasn't enough to shatter the steel right away, but it definitely weakened it. Kind of like setting a timer."

"You're sure?"

"I don't know anything 'bout engines, but I know alchemy when I see it."

"But it was _deliberate?"_

"Uh huh. You don't just trip and transmute."

"An alchemist did this?" Hodge wondered aloud, drifting closer.

"Not necessarily," said the kid. "Could be an amateur, it's not a hard transmutation."

Most transmutations were hard transmutations. Hodge gave the kid a sidelong look as he got closer to the motor. "You know about this stuff?"

"A thing or two," the boy said with what Hodge interpreted as irony. Probably the kid was a student who had unexpectedly found himself in his element among strangers.

"Well," the kid continued, "let's give it a shot."

"Give what?"

The teenager gave the coachman a funny look. "Repairing the engine." A nonverbal ' _duh'_ trailed the end of the sentence.

Stepping forward, he slapped his palms together with an enormous clap. There was a loud, clear chime, so near to Hodge's ear that he nearly looked around for the source. Lightning, as though from a transmutation circle, suddenly erupted from the boy's palms and he pressed them to the metal.

They squinted against the brief, blinding flash and hardly knew what they were looking at before realizing the engine sat there looking like it must have a few days before, shiny and new.

"Ow!" The kid whipped his glove off his left hand where the skin was red from contact, even through a glove, with the hot metal.

"Told you," murmured the driver absently, agog at his motor all pristine again. "How—how did you—"

"Alchemy," said the kid matter-of-factly. "Can we get going now? Actually—no chance you could drop me off at Falstadt, as a little thank you…?"

He stared expectantly at the driver, who hadn't heard a word and was checking over the motor in wonder.

The boy sighed.

"Well, let me know if a wheel falls off or something," he said grumpily, and turned to reenter the coach.

Hodge glanced around at the astonished company. It was not so much the transmutation that startled them (although that was novelty enough; there were few alchemists in this region and all of them were past forty years) as the means by which the boy had done it—was there an array they hadn't seen?

"We don't know why someone did this," Hodge said to the kid's retreating back.

He paused at the door. "Does it change the route? Unless we reroute to Falstadt or, you know, blow up, it's got nothing to do with me."

"Thanks," said another passenger, halfway between dry and bemused, "We'll let you know if we blow up, shall we?"

All they saw was the white glove's casual wave as it disappeared inside the coach.

Hodge looked around with a half grin. "I guess we're off again. Once we get to Duros I'll file something with the sheriff and we'll corroborate your report to Monarch Lines," he added to the driver, who nodded and with a last look at the engine, slammed the massive hood down. "Lucky we had an alchemist on board."

The fellows laughed and shook their heads. Hodge shepherded them back into the coach as the driver regained his seat, careful not to allow his own consternation to show. It bothered him—that was _sabotage_ , and there was a reason for it. It was probable the offending alchemist had remained at the train station after setting his "timer." Was it really happenstance that another alchemist—not really a cenz a dozen out here—was a passenger on the same shuttle that had been set up to break down?

"What in the world happened?" asked Mrs Besk from her seat beside Ms Somers. Both women had graciously swept up the broken china from the floor, picked up the debris, and straightened the furnishings, for which the men (who had been rather useless in their own endeavor) had thanked them.

"Motor trouble," said Hodge with a smile. "We'll be up and running again in a sec."

On cue, the driver called: "Take two!"

The engine started to nervous laughter from most of the passengers, save the blond boy and the gentleman who'd been sitting in the back and hadn't ventured out with the rest of the men. In fact, the teenager seemed positively stormy at the piling inconveniences.

Hodge paused, then strode forward and took a seat near the kid, who raised an eyebrow.

"Owen Hodge," said the constable, offering the boy his hand. "Thanks for your help."

The kid hesitated, eyeing the proffered hand, then shrugged and shook his head. "No big deal."

Hodge hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and leaned back in the armchair. It kind of tickled him how they fixed up the coach so as it almost resembled the front parlor of Hodge's old ma. He could almost smell the peppermints she kept in a little glass swan on the coffee table. "Are you an alchemy student?"

"No. I'm Edward Elric, a state alchemist."

Hodge stared at him a moment and then laughed.

"What's funny?" The lad sounded a little defensive, assuming Hodge was laughing at his expense. Surely he ran into plenty of disbelief on account of his age. Well, maybe Hodge did laugh partly from surprise, but he covered for it quickly.

"I've only ever met one other alchemist, and he was a statie too. What're the odds?" Hodge grinned at Elric, who seemed interested.

"Really? Wouldn't happen to be Roe Drury, would it?"

"No…" But the name seemed familiar, and Falstadt floated up from somewhere in his memory. "That's the one in Falstadt, right? No—but I didn't know Drury had a state license."

"Back in the day."

"The 'day' usually means Ishval," Hodge observed blandly. Elric didn't contradict him.

The same old song. Many alchemists had resigned after Ishval, far more than had enlisted since. They must have been hurting for new blood to go hiring surly teenagers. Hodge had a hard time reconciling the public image of state alchemists as living weapons with this wry, ornery boy who had sat for the better part of the ride with a book in his hand.

"Guess that day ended for Drury too. Never met him, but I _was_ in the military a few years ago. Not Ishval; southern border. The Ashlar Alchemist, you know him?"

"Heard of 'im. He's never been up eastways." Elric drummed his fingers on his knee, and peered at him with disconcerting yellow eyes. "What do you know of Drury?"

"Is he in trouble?"

"He's missing. You hadn't heard?" Hodge shook his head. "He was last seen in Falstadt, so I'm headed there to trace his steps. Assuming they don't stop short," Elric added under his breath. Belatedly Hodge realized he meant the man could be dead and was taken aback by the youngster's frank appraisal.

"I only know he operates in Falstadt. Or did, I guess. No offense, but what does the military care about a missing alchemist? Even a former statie?"

Even as he said it, Hodge realized that the military probably kept tabs on all their former dogs, and probably other alchemists as well. Any scholar well versed in the field was certainly watched by a military that, if it could not recruit the alchemist, would at least satisfy itself that the person posed no threat to them.

Elric shrugged, only willing to divulge so much of the case, and pulled out his book again. Now that he'd confirmed Hodge had no knowledge of the missing alchemist he'd visibly lost interest in continuing the discussion.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Hodge said, shifting in the chair, "but I'm a little surprised you're the only one they're sending out to handle this."

Elric looked back up and glowered. "Why? Send an dog to find a dog."

It surprised Hodge to hear the alchemist be so flippant; he would have thought they would all be uptight in the manner of men who were compelled to defend their choices.

"It just seems like more than a one-man job."

"I usually work with my brother." Elric flipped a page.

"Where's he?"

"Hopefully making more use of his time than I am."

Behind them, Hodge spied Marsia Besk straining almost comically to eavesdrop on their conversation. Even Ms Somers didn't appear indifferent, and from time to time she glanced shyly in the alchemist's direction. Both men were speaking quietly but Elric seemed unconcerned about revealing his state license. He might have to go about it more carefully in Falstadt.

Hodge stretched his legs. "Will you report the alchemy to your superiors?"

"I'll sign off on the coachman's report to Monarch Lines," said Elric to his book.

"Aren't you even interested in who sabotaged the engine?"

"One investigation at a time," drawled Elric. But then he frowned, and ever so slightly glanced at the other passengers from the corner of his yellow eye.

Then he turned that startling yellow eye on Hodge, only just catching the constable's tone. "Hold up. You don't think _I_ did it, do you?"

Hodge grinned at him and shrugged. "Up 'til you pulled out that pocketwatch, I wouldn't have ruled you out. But I figure a statie's got better things to do."

Elric scowled at him. "Why the hell would I sabotage a ride I don't even want to be on?"

"You wouldn't be the first teenager I've seen who just wanted a chance to show off to strangers."

The kid took offense. "Like transmuting _steel_ is showing off," he scoffed. Hodge laughed.

Elric snapped his book shut and lowered his voice. "Listen," he said, "I'd prefer it if the rest of the ride went off without a hitch. If that 'alchemist'"—he used air quotes to denote his refusal to automatically grant the title to anyone who had only shown themselves capable of cracking steel—"stayed at the station, it _will_ go off without a hitch. And if it doesn't, it means your alchemist is on this coach. It sure ain't me."

"It's not _my_ alchemist," said Hodge. He rescued his coffee cup quickly from a jolt by a pothole on the road. "Besides, even if you weren't a statie, you've been bitching about the route since you got to the coach. I wouldn't really figure you'd want to delay it even more."

"Damn straight," muttered Elric.

Even if there was another alchemist on board, having seen the ease with which Elric had dispatched the sabotage would surely discourage further attempts. Surely.

Yet there was a little tension that Hodge couldn't quite roll out of his shoulders, and if the kid was half as smart as he seemed, he felt it too.

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I hope I won't have to go back and edit this...it should be fine. There will be action...

Any thoughts are appreciated!


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